Rosa blinks a few times. It is clear she’s grown suddenly frightened. “Who are you? Has something happened to Mother?”
“Rosa, do you remember a little girl named Lumi? Her mother’s name is Summa and you helped them to…”
Joona falls silent as he sees her wandering, lost gaze.
“Why did you come to Stockholm to find me?” he asks, although he knows his question won’t be answered.
Rosa Bergman begins to cry. A nurse comes in and comforts her in a practiced manner.
She says quietly to Joona, “Come with me. I’ll show you out.”
They walk along the wide hall, designed for wheelchairs.
“How long has she been suffering from dementia?” Joona asks.
“Things went quickly for Maja. We started to see the first signs last summer, so, for about a year. In the old days, they used to call it a second childhood, which is not so far from the truth.”
“If she… if she’s able to think clearly at all…” Joona says seriously.
“It’s unlikely,” the nurse says, but you never know. “I can call you.”
“My card,” Joona says, and hands it to her.
She looks impressed. “Detective Inspector?” She tacks it to the bulletin board behind her desk.
12
Joona steps into the fresh air and takes a deep breath. Perhaps Rosa Bergman did have something important to tell me, he thinks. Maybe someone sent her, but she began to suffer from dementia before she could do anything about it.
Perhaps he’ll never know what the message was.
It has been twelve years since he lost Summa and Lumi, and the last trace of them has disappeared with Rosa Bergman’s memory.
Joona climbs into his car and wipes the tears from his cheeks. He closes his eyes for a moment, then starts the drive back to Stockholm. He’s barely gone thirty kilometers along the E45 when he gets a call from Carlos Eliasson, chief of the National Police.
“There’s been a murder in Sundsvall. A girl,” Carlos says. “The call came in just after four this morning.”
“I’m on leave,” Joona says. His voice is barely audible. He’s driving through a forest that offers glimpses of a distant silvery lake between the trees.
“Joona? What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
In the background, someone yells for Carlos.
“There’s a damned board meeting I’ve got to go to, but I would like… You see, I just talked with Prosecutor Susanne Öst and she thinks that the police in Västernorrland do not intend to request our help in the case.”
“So why call me?”
“I told them we would send an observer anyway.”
“Since when do we send observers?”
“As of now,” says Carlos. He lowers his voice. “Things are kind of touchy around here these days. Remember the mess with the captain of the hockey league, Janne Svensson? The press had a field day with the police department’s incompetence.”
“Because they didn’t find-”
“Let’s not discuss it. That was Susanne Öst’s first big prosecution. I don’t want to say the press had it right, but the Västernorrland police could certainly have used you that time. They were just too slow and kept going by the book. Time ran out. Not unusual, perhaps, but it can lead to media unpleasantness.”
“I can’t talk anymore,” Joona says, trying to cut short the conversation.
“You know I wouldn’t trouble you if this was just an average murder case,” Carlos says. Joona can hear him breathing deeply over the phone. “The press is going to be all over this one, Joona. It’s extremely violent, extremely bloody. And there’s one especially nasty thing: the girl’s body has been arranged.”
“Meaning what?”
“She’s lying in bed with her hands over her face.”
Joona says nothing. His left hand is on the wheel. The trees flash past as he drives, and Joona can hear a babble of voices in the background. Carlos waits patiently, and Joona turns off the E45 and onto the E14, leading east to Sundsvall, on the coast.
“Just go there, Joona,” Carlos says. “Be nice and let them solve the case themselves, preferably before the press gets to town.”
“So now I’m more than just an observer?”
“No, no. That’s what you are, but stick around and keep an eye on the investigation. Make a few suggestions. Just keep in mind that you have no authority in the case.”
“Because I’m under internal investigation?”
“It’s important you keep a low profile.”
13
North of Sundsvall, Joona leaves the coast and turns onto Highway 86, which heads inland toward Indalsälven. After two hours, he’s close to where the home for troubled girls should be. He slows down and eventually turns onto a gravel road. Rays of sunshine stream past the dark trunks of the tall pines.
A dead girl, thinks Joona.
During the night while everyone slept, a girl was murdered and then set up, “arranged,” in her bed. According to the local police, the crime was brutal. They have no suspect and now it’s too late to close off the roads, but all officers in the area are on alert. Commissioner Olle Gunnarsson is leading the preliminary investigation but, Carlos tells Joona, the situation has been so chaotic, the girls have been so agitated, so uncontrollable, that the investigation has not yet begun.
It’s ten by the time Joona reaches the home. He parks outside the line of police tape and gets out. The only sound he can hear is the buzz of insects in the ditch beside the road. Here the forest has opened into an enormous glade. Tree trunks, still damp with dew, shimmer in the sunshine. A hill slopes down to Lake Himmelsjö, and a metal sign beside the road reads BRIGITTAGÅRDEN, HVB: A HOME FOR YOUTH WITH SPECIAL NEEDS.
Joona heads toward the group of red buildings, which form a square around a gravel yard. An ambulance, three police cars, a white Mercedes, and three other cars are parked near the buildings.
A dog is barking. His leash is attached to a line running between two trees.
An older man with a walrus mustache and a beer belly, wearing a wrinkled linen suit, is standing by the main building. He’s noticed Joona but does not acknowledge him. Instead, he taps a cigarette out of a full packet and starts to light it.
Joona swings his legs over a second ring of police tape while the man reconsiders and puts the cigarette behind his ear.
“Joona Linna from the National Police.”
“Gunnarsson,” the man replies. “Detective Gunnarsson.”
“I’m supposed to observe your work.”
“As long as you don’t get in the way,” Gunnarsson says coldly, looking Joona over.
Joona glances at the big house. The technicians are already busy. Floodlights are blazing in all the rooms, making the windows shine with an unnatural light.
A white-faced officer comes out of the house. He’s holding his hand over his mouth and wobbles down the steps, then, leaning on the wall for support, he bends forward and throws up into the nettles by the rain barrel.
“You’ll do the same once you’ve been inside,” Gunnarsson says, grinning at Joona.
“What do we know so far?”
“We don’t know a damn thing. The alarm came early this morning. The therapist in charge here called. His name’s Daniel Grim. It was four o’clock. He was at home on Bruksgatan in Sundsvall. He’d just got a phone call from the place. He didn’t know what was going on when he called us, but said the girls were screaming about a lot of blood.”
“So it was the girls themselves who called him?” Joona asks.
“That’s right.”
“They didn’t call emergency? They called the therapist in Sundsvall?”
“Exactly.”
“Shouldn’t there be staff on-site?”
“Apparently there’s not.”
“But some adult?”
“We don’t know. It’s impossible to talk to the girls,” Gunnarsson says. He sounds weary.